JALA Winter-Spring 2008-Vol 2 No 1 - African Literature Association

In Memory of Ogali A. Ogali
(October 27, 1935-July 9, 2006)
On July 9, 2006, Ogali A. Ogali, one of the foremost authors of
the Onitsha Market pamphlet tradition of Nigeria, died in his home town.
He was buried on September 9, 2006 without the fanfare associated with
successful writers in Nigeria. In a report of the death of this Onitsha
Market guru, Uduma Kalu, the irrepressible literary reporter of the
Nigerian Guardian described the death of Ogali Ogali as “uncelebrated.”1
According Kalu, Ogali is “the veteran writer who produced the Onitsha
Market” classic, Veronica My Daughter. Ogali’s death came to the literary
community in Nigeria through an off-hand announcement made by the
President of the Association of Nigerian Authors, Dr Wale Okediran. It
was probably Charry Adaunmu who passed on this information to the
President, which he made at the recently organized International
Symposium to celebrate the 20 th anniversary of the award of the Nobel
Prize to Professor Wole Soyinka. Ogali A. Ogali was 80 years old when
he died. Ogali A. Ogali was at the centre of the Onitsha market tradition
of writing, a tradition of popular writing that grew around the Onitsha
market town in the 1940s, and subsequently became known as the
popular Onitsha market pamphlets. He was not just a prominent figure
in that tradition of pamphleteering; he was the Dean of that popular
literary tradition. In his career, he produced more than 20 books. He
worked in the novel, drama and the occasional writing genres that this
literary tradition is known for. But it was in the dramatic mode that he
excelled the most. Veronica My Daughter, the most famous of the
pamphlets of this tradition became an Onitsha classic in his life time. It
sold over 60, 000 copies and was read all over West Africa in the 1950s.
Unlike many of the pamphleteers, Ogali kept writing until his death. In
2002, Fourth Dimension publisher brought out The Juju Priest and Arrest
My Son.
Ogali A. Ogali was born on October 27, 1935, which is one of the
two birth dates ascribed to him but certainly the most popular. The
biographical details of this man are as enigmatic as the language of the
Onitsha market pamphlets themselves. According to Reinhard W. Sander,
Ogali published Veronica My Daughter when he was 21 years of age. But
this depends on whether we accept the October 27, 1935 birth date or
the second birth date of 1931. However, since Ogali Ogali himself
favoured the October 27, 1935 birth date, it is reasonable to accept that
212

date as his official birth date. Ogali was born in Item, “a prosperous
village” in the present day Imo State, Nigeria. According to Sanders, he
did his primary schooling in Item and then proceeded to Hope Waddell
Training Institution, Calabar where he stayed on from 1943-1949. Soon
after his education at this Institute, the most prestigious at that in the
whole of Eastern Nigeria, he worked as an account clerk, a beach clerk,
a cashier and then “as store keeper with the United Africa Company in
Calabar from 1950-1954.” At some point, he also worked for the Nigerian
Railway Corporation based in Enugu, Eastern Nigeria but he was soon
dissatisfied with this job and “sought employment as a teacher and
worked in various schools in Eastern Nigeria from 1957-1959” (Sander
ix, 1980). In 1959, he went to Ghana for a two-year course at the Ghana
School of Journalism. When he got back to Nigeria, he worked as a reporter
for the eastern Nigeria newspaper, The Outlook, in locations such Enugu,
Port Harcourt and Kaduna. Once again in 1963, he left for England where
he pursued a two-year course “in cinematography and television/film
script writing” (Sander xii). When he got back from this trip, he took an
appointment as news editor with the Eastern Nigerian Broadcasting
Corporation, and then the Broadcasting Corporation of Biafra before
moving to work for the East Central State Broadcasting Service and later
the Nigerian Television Service (NTA) after the Nigerian Civil War.
It was Ulli Beier, the Austrian culture enthusiast and critic of
African art that first drew the world’s critical attention to the flourishing
literary phenomenon called the Onitsha market pamphlets in the mid-
1950s. Through a series of short, but lucid essays, Beier was able to write
into Nigerian literary history the Onitsha market literary phenomenon.
For him, the “highlife philosophy” which drove the authors and
consumers of these pamphlets also reveals a firmer, if not violent, desire
to engage with and be part of the two parallel kinds of modernities – the
local and the global modernities. The “highlife” of the Onitsha market
was partly expressed in the allure of the city, which offered an alternative
to the life that was always known. “Highlife” was the sign of social and
cultural change, a sign which made possible the redefinition of selfhood
and community in Iboland in the 1940s and 1950s. But while the
pamphleteers who were armed with mere primary school and
elementary teachers’ certificates in the new Western styled education
were consciously looking to be immersed in this life, there was also a
discernable social and cultural tension in the relationship between the
preferred “highlife” and tradition, which they seem to reject. Those who
sought the “highlife” did so in the city of Onitsha, and not in the adjoining
villages where there was still the tenacious hold of age-old practices
213

defined by the masculine precepts of village life. This tension is well
documented in the pamphlets, especially in the works dealing with sex,
sexuality and gender relations. Describing the “highlife girl,” Donatus
Nwoga writes, “These writers produce an image of a new type of African
girl. The girls are no longer the traditional quiet, modest, playthings of
their parents. They write love letters…They even deceive men” (Transition
19, 1965: 27). This remark is also true of the paintings of the signwriters,
especially in the works of Middle Art,2 who in some ways expresses the
soul of this period in the changes in sex roles and the sexuality of the
“highlife” of the 1950s.
Ogali A. Ogali’s qualification as the Dean of the Onitsha market
pamphlets is predicated on his prolific output and on the impact that
his works had on the readership of the Onitsha Market pamphlets of the
1950s and 1960s. He was the pamphleteer of the pamphleteers of his
generation. He contributed immensely to the form and content of this
tradition of popular writing in Onitsha. His pamphlets reveal the
intensity with which he dealt with the social and cultural temperament
of that period in Nigeria. Ogali did not only write plays and novellas
that captured the spirit of this market town of the 1940s and 1950s, he
was also keenly aware of his position as an educator. This recognition
led him to the belief that he had the duty to educate the “younger ones
who should know of the new ways.” To achieve this goal, he published a
four-volume booklet of history notes “for Standard 111, IV, V and VI”
(Sander 1980, xii). But this was not to be the only reason why Ogali
engaged in self-publishing. According to Sander, Ogali engaged in selfpublishing
“…most likely… due to the misfortune he had with the
publication of Veronica My Daughter.” This pamphlet was initially selfpublished
and “…in 1956 he had paid 6d for the printing of the copy
and could sell it at 1/6d a copy or 12s a dozen. This way, he made a tidy
profit on the first 80, 000 copies” (xii) But the tide of fortune and fame
was to change when according to Sander, he got mixed up with “two
different publishers, both of whom bought out separate versions of
Veronica My Daughter” (xii). As the story goes, this mix-up resulted in “a
High Court trial and his not receiving any royalties for the 170, 000 copies
which have been published since then” ( Sander xii). This was a bitter
pill for Ogali to swallow and the lesson for him was not to trust any
publisher since then.
Ogali’s literary output can be roughly classified into two literary
folios: the pre-war writings, which include Veronica My Daughter and the
post-war writings. No Heaven For the Priest is arguably the best of the
post-War writings. This rough classification is mainly remarked by the
trauma of the Nigerian civil war. According to Joseph C. Anafulu, the
214

old Onitsha market was flattened by “repeated shelling in 1967” during
what is now described as the Nigerian civil war. After the Biafran3
capitulation, Onitsha quickly re-established itself as a major trading
centre and a new market was soon under construction.” (1973: 175). The
new market was never to be like the one that was destroyed.
A man of his time, Ogali recognized that the global current, which
he witnessed, was not a mere flash in the pan. He understood that his
les than educated readership needed a guide in this new world. He gave
them what he thought they wanted in different literary genres and in
different languages. He was interested in history as he was in
contemporary matters of culture, literature and politics. He published
in Igbo, his ethnic language, as well as in the “English language.” In his
pamphlets, we recognise the soul of that era. In one pamphlet after the
other, Ogali eloquently talks about the things that matter to the Onitsha
market people at that time. His pamphlets carefully plot the stories of
the Onitsha market locality to the readership. The pamphlets reveal the
anxieties as well as aspirations that the period. At the core of the anxiety
of that generation of writers, and the patrons they wrote for, was the
uncertainty which the notion of “highlife” about, especially for people
who experienced this “highlife” modernity from the bottom of the street.
By dramatizing the uncertainty that came with the “highlife” modernity,
Ogali is able to capture the soul of that social and upheaval that took
place in the Onitsha of the 1950s and the 1960s before the Nigerian civil
war razed down this prosperous town on the river Niger. As part of the
enunciation of the anxiety of this period, especially as it was expressed
in the conundrum of the meeting between the Onitsha locality and the
eccentric current of global tides, Ogali’s pamphlets call attention to the
euphoria expressed by this locality as it consciously accepted what its
saw as the brave new world. The pamphlets also call attention to
moments of disillusionment that came with the global current of
uncertainties. This new brave world is best articulated in the Onitsha
notion of the “highlife.” If there is one Onitsha market pamphleteer that
embodies that sense of the “highlife,” it is Ogali Ogali. In the early Ogali,
which includes Veronica My Daughter, Ogali Ogali shows this aspect of
quite clearly. But his playful display of the spirit of the time cannot be
properly understood outside of the temperament of Onitsha, the city by
the river Niger. The larger story of the success of the Onitsha market
pamphlets is intricately connected to the freedom, which this city gave
to these popular writers, printers and readers. Ogali’s pamphlets
eloquently express the cultural trade that followed the production of a
local capitalism in Onitsha at the time.
215

Veronica My Daughter is Ogali first successful pamphlet. As soon
as this pamphlet was released, his fame as one of the authors of the
Onitsha market was firmly established. Indeed, it could be said that he
became the Dean of this pamphleteering tradition after this publication.
Reinhard Sander and Emmanuel Obiechina agree that Veronica My
Daughter was one of the most outstanding of the pamphlets of the 1950s.
Since most of the author of this literary tradition did not date their works
for the fear that this would give a sense of “age” to their works, we can
only hazard a guess as to when this pamphlet was actually published
by paying attention to cues in the text and by reading the paratext as
well as paying attention to relevant cues from the author’s life. Indeed,
the case of Veronica My Daughter is even more complicated than the other
pamphlets for the reason that there were as many as four versions of
the text. Two of the versions were published at different times and by
different publishers. However, if we take the cue from the controversial
birthdates of this author, we may be able to put the year of publication
around the late 1950s. Sander tells us that Ogali published this pamphlet
when he “was only twenty one.” If indeed Ogali was born on October 27,
1935, that would place the publication in the year 1956. According to
Obiechina, Veronica My Daughter sold “more than the usual 3- 4,000
copies” (Literature for the Masses 1971). It broke the record sales because
it “had record sales of 60,000 copies” (4). Sander puts the monumental
success of this pamphlet well beyond the figure quoted by Emmanuel
Obiechina. He puts the initial sale figure at over 80,000. The closest that
any sales figure in the industry came to that of Veronica My Daughter
was 40,000, which was recorded for A. O. Ude’s The Nigerian Bachelor’s
Guide. Among the galaxy of the authors of this pamphleteering tradition,
it was Ogali Ogali that energetically pronounced the spirit of that age. It
was Veronica My Daughter, which captures and establishes the spirit of
the age with definite audacity. This pamphlet surely fulfils the declared
goals of the Onitsha market authors who saw themselves as pioneers
educators and key figures in the brave new world that was just unfolding
in Onitsha in the late 1940s. As mediators of the “highlife” modernity to
a local audience that was still trying to catch its breath in a welter of
rapid social, political and cultural changes, the authors took seriously
the declaration in Ralph Obiora’s Beauty is Trouble that the Onitsha market
story must be “first educative, second, to see that it is entertaining and
third, to see that it is instructive.”
Veronica My Daughter may have influenced the form of the
romance subgenre of the Onitsha market pamphlet tremendously. Soon
after its publication and the commercial buzz which followed, a lot of
216

imitations were put into the market. There are examples of the romance
pamphlets such as Raphael Obiorah’s Beauty is Trouble, N.O Madu’s Miss
Rosy in the Romance of True Love, Okenwa Olisa’s Elizabeth My Love, and R.
Okonkwo’s The Game of Love. It is still hard to tell if Veronica My Daughter
had any significant influence on the extraordinary narrative of the
sexually explicit novella, Mabel the Sweet Honey that Poured Away
published by Speedy Eric. What is clear though is that the latter pamphlet
was published after the phenomenal success of the former. However,
the similarities between Veronica My Daughter and Okenwa Olisa’s
Elizabeth My Lover are striking to say the least and one can deduce that
the former influenced the latter. The success of Veronica My Daughter
encouraged Ogali A. Ogali to publish pamphlet after pamphlet. He
published the fantastic novelette, Okeke the Magician, which is described
by Sander as the story of “African magic with Indian spiritism, a subject
which he was interested in at the time” (xiii). This is clearly one of the
pre-war fictions of Ogali Ogali. Other notable pre-war fictions are Eddy
the Coal City Boy and Caroline the One-Guinea Girl. Okeke the Magician is
remarked by the regular desire of the Onitsha market authors to show
off their connection to the outside world. This knowledge is put on
display in most of their pamphlets. As one of the frontier men of the new
brave world that the Onitsha market locality was experiencing at the
time, Ogali proves his knowledge of the world by introducing a local
character who made it big in the international trade of magic and sorcery.
Ogali describes the story of Okeke as “a young man who made up his
mind to study magic and occultism and finally qualifies as an adept.”
Okeke is not brilliant but once he decided that he was going to be a
magician, nothing could stop him. Although he could not pass his
“Cambridge” and failed in many attempts to engage in other trades, his
calling is really in the business of magic. In this regard, his encounter
with Professor Gundun changed his life forever. As a stow-way, he
managed to get to the United States of America where he earned his
first degree, the MA, “with a First class Honours in Spiritism.” In London,
he acquired another degree “with a first class degree in Herbalism, and
in India, he secured another degree. Okeke took the “Doctor of Science”
in Egypt but this was after completing an unparalleled trip to Abyssinia.
Okeke gets into trouble on return to Nigeria because he was quite
frivolous with his magic. The primary source of his problem is that he
gave an “Open Sesame Charm” to the Board of Thieves. Members misuse
the charm and were brought to the presence of a judge. Although Okeke
is able to cast his spell on the judge, he still finds it expedient to leave
his fatherland for the reason that he is not “welcomed whole-heartedly
in his country. He relocates to the United States of America.
217

Eddy the Coal City Boy is interesting in many ways. The moral
backdrop is obvious. It is clearly articulated in the form of a story within
a story. Edward Johnson, an elderly man and a father, recounts the travails
and triumphs of his life to his son, Robert, as a way of instructing him to
live a fruitful life. This story is as simple as they come in the Onitsha
market tradition. It is didactic and its narrative energy is propelled by
the moral framework, which the philosophy of the “highlife” brings to
the fore of social life at the time. Eddy is the “now” man who cannot give
up the enjoyment of the “highlife.” He is expelled from school when it
was found out that “he sneaks out of his boarding school to get the taste
of the “highlife.” He soon gets trapped in it. Without understanding the
wicked side of living in this world, he sinks deep into the false sense of
freedom which this act of living offers. Not long after, he is fired from
his post of a clerk at the post office. Reduced to a pauper, he takes a job
of a truck-pusher, the meanest and cheapest of all jobs. But the story is
far from over. Eddy marries Jane, the mother of Robert who helps him
start life all over again, and he becomes “financially, socially and
economically overhauled.” The moral point is that “highlife” has its bad
sides and Eddy the Coal city boy chooses that wicked aspect without
knowing that it could lead to his damnation. Once he realized himself
and through the help of Jane, he is able to retrace his way back to the
good and permanent world of the “highlife.” In the euphoria of the
“highlife,” Eddy learns about the difficult flip side of the “highlife.”
Caroline the One-Guinea Girl is revealing of another aspect of the
Onitsha market “highlife.” This is certainly one of Ogali’s best stories.
It reveals the gendered face of the “highlife” modernity. Caroline is the
new girl of the era. She is beautiful and she knows it. She even flaunts it.
She commodifies this beauty but she does this to her own peril. Ogali A.
Ogali describes her as “intoxicated by her… vital statistics.” Vain and
manipulative, Carol, like Eddy, initially fails to make the distinction
between the good and the ugly in this new way of doing things. She fails
to realize that the commodification of her body is part of the vain glory
that the ‘highlife’ modernity brings to the fore and that this zone of social
exchange is not without its problems. Ogali is eager to tell us in this
pamphlet about the dangers of living dangerously in this sphere of social
exchange. Her “nicely set breasts” will soon mean nothing to the men
who patronize and shower her with gifts. This realization happens sooner
than later. Caroline’s grand “highlife” ambition is to go to London. She
meets Okonkwo and things seem set to take off for her. Okonkwo already
has an offer to study in London. The trouble is: he does not have the
money to foot the bill. He takes the obvious way out. He defrauds the
218

ank where he is a small time clerk. He is caught and sent to jail. Carol
who has “no need for a prisoner” soon finds another “moogoo”1 in Igwe.
But Igwe, who has just “returned from Toronto...with a PhD in
Biochemistry”, proves to be smarter. She gets pregnant by Igwe and
although she tries very hard to abort the pregnancy, she succeeds only
after a long while. In the meantime, she is beginning to lose her glamour
and men no longer flock to her. In an unexplained narrative turn, Caroline
finds religion. A suitor, Simplicity, comes along. She is happy to go with
him. Caroline is saved from the deadly fate of Mabel,2 one of the most
colourful female characters of the whole of Onitsha Market collection.
Smile Awhile and Long Long Ago are the two other well known
fictional works, which Ogali Ogali wrote in the late 1950s. Reinhrd W.
Sander puts the dates for both pamphlets as 1957. We may only assume
that Sanders got this information from the author himself and not from
the original versions of the pamphlets. The Onitsha market pamphlets
at the Bruce Peel Special Collections depository at the Rutherford Library
of the University of Alberta do not have any clear dates of publication,
which is not surprising. However, it clear that the pamphlets. Smile
Awhile and Long Long Ago form part of the pre-war collections. There are
obvious textual markers to prove this. Smile Awhile, which is a short tale
about the character, Abanidiegwu, is also part of the longer and more
ambitious novel, Long Long Ago, which is written in six parts. Each part
explores a distinct character and location. The first of the six-part-novel
begins with “Young Jackie,” a story about Jackie who made it to Oxford
to read Latin. He comes back to a disappointing Nigeria after his study
abroad but in time, he grows wiser and soon becomes a village chief
because wisdom comes with abandoning the “old fooleries.” The second
story is titled “Okokobioko.” The chief character of this story is a
flamboyant personality, Okokobioko. There is a bit of myth-making in
this story of a man whose name means, “fondling” in the traditional
Igbo language. He takes on the “power of Atlas,” the “wisdom of
Solomon” and “the speed of mercury.” He becomes a soldier-warrior
for mankind and ultimately ends the evil in the world. Booboo is the
main character of the third story, “The Man Who Knew Everything.”
His antagonist is the diminutive man “whose name and origin no one
knew.” The giant, Booboo, faces a formidable enemy in this diminutive
personality. It is a story that reminds one of the Biblical David and Goliath
story. The trouble is, “The Man Who Knew Everything,” is not as well
told as the Biblical story of David and Goliath. “Smile Awhile,” which I
have already referred to, is about the return of the rogue, Abanidiegwu,
whose roguery made him the “richest man in the land of Potopo.” Luck
219

turns the wrong corner for him when he attempts to marry Obioma, a
woman who already has a fiancé. A bizarre court case ensues, and in the
end he fails to achieve his goal. The fifth story, “The Great Family,” is
more or less an allegory. It is the story of the family of the “hand,” “the
leg,” and “the stomach.” A quarrel ensues between parts of this family
of the human body. It is quickly sorted out by “the head,” the paramount
chief of the body. The sixth story, “My Adventure,” is told in the first
person narrative voice, allowing Ogali to be personal and involved in
the narrative. It is about the adventure of the narrator, which turns out
with many more bizarre twists than he originally intended. The collection
of stories is uneven, very dissimilar and all of them briskly told. Other
pre-war pamphlets include Veronica My Daughter, Mr. Rabbit is Dead,
Adelabu and The Ghost of Lumumba.
Thirty Years for the Director is perhaps his most significant postwar
drama. Mr. Rabbit is Dead is a play about crime and punishment
Ogali style. The structure is simple. Chief Reuben dies of poisoning. On
his death bed, he fingers Henry as the person who poisoned him. Henry’s
motive is to default on the payment of 200 Pound Sterling, which he
borrowed from Chief Reuben. Dr Jonathan, a native doctor, is called in
to settle the dispute. He does by magical means. Henry is found guilty
of the crime. He refuses to accept the verdict. He takes the matter to the
court of law. In the clever drama of the court room, Henry pulls off a
heart-trick. He is set free. He soon assumes the position of the paramount
rulership of the community in place of the dead Chief Reuben. Adelabu
deals with the drama of one of the most flamboyant but controversial
politicians that Nigerian may ever know. He is Chief Adegoke Adelabu.
He was referred to in Western Nigeria as “the strong man of Ibadan
politics” in the 1960s. This play dramatizes the suspicious death of this
politician in a bizarre car-crash. The Ghost of Patrice Lumumba is Ogali’s
most accomplished political play. In this play, Ogali tells his readers
that The Ghost of Patrice Lumumbar “it is an imaginary story dramatized
to show that whatever happens, and under all circumstances, the law of
retributive justice must be maintained.” Ogali once again displays his
knowledge of African politics. Obviously, his aim was to educate the
people about the intricacies of African politics while showing that he is
the most astute mediator of this political world to the local Onitsha
market community. He obviously takes sides with the common people
by rendering the popular opinion of the manner and death of the
Congolese politician and nationalist, Patrice Lumumba, who according
to Ogali, was killed by “the Congo Vampires-Tshome, Kasavubu and
Mobuto (Mobutu) in the very nose of the United Nations.”
220

The most remarkable of the post-war pamphlets are the dramatic
piece, Twenty Years for the Director (1973) and the non-fiction, No Heaven
for the Priest (1971). In the former, Ogali returns to the theme of corruption.
The story revolves around Okoro, the Managing Director of a big
Company, who is not only a sexual predator but also a “bribe-taker” per
excellence. It is one of the later Onitsha market pamphlets and it has a
clear date of publication. There is a “List of Other Books” at the back
cover of this pamphlet, which advertises books “to be published” by the
author. Talisman for Love, Dimgba, and No County is Civilized are the
pamphlets advertised to be published. No Heaven for the Priest has a pretty
long “Forward.” Ogali informs the reader in the pretext to the pamphlet
that “not all those who call on the name of the Lord shall go to heaven,”
because “Those who preach on (sic) holy things, must themselves be
holy.” This pamphlet deals essentially with those who are
“themselves…morally bankrupt.” It deals essentially with religious
charlatanism. If Ogali debates the religiously depraved thaumaturge of
his time in this pamphlet, he also wears the toga of a religious purifier.
He defends “the poor and defenceless” against the treachery of these
new men of God. In No Heaven for the Priest, Ogali A. Ogali calls attention
to the corruption of the soul and those responsible for these corrupting
influences.
There are lesser known works of Ogali Ogali. Emmanuel
Obiechina’s book, An African Popular Market Literature: A Study of Onitsha
Market Pamphlets points to some of these pamphlets. There are such
titles as Agnes the Faithful Lover, Angelina My Darling, Adventures of
Mirinda, The Voice of Love, and The Love That Fights. There is also the lesser
known pamphlet written in the Igbo language, Adanwa Nwam. Obiechina
also credits Ogali with the publication of Do You Know Them? and The
Road to Success. The former pamphlet deals with what Obiechina describes
as a source of “general knowledge” and the latter with the “essay,”
meaning a do-it-yourself-pamphlet that describes, if not prescribes, how
to write “a good essay.” Is This Politics, another example of the lesser
known of the pamphlet produced by Ogali, is also categorized as
belonging to the sub-genre of the “essay.” The Adventure of Constable Joe
is a dramatic piece about the corruption and brutalities of the police.
Ogali’s literary output is colourful, diverse in the use of literary
genres and thematically relevant to his time. But it was Veronica My
Daughter, the rather simple story of girl who insists on having a hand in
the selection of her life-partner that made him one of the quintessential
authors of the Onitsha market pamphlets. Ogali A. Ogali is certainly not
the most prolific of the Onitsha market authors. He has formidable rivals
221

in Okenwa Olisah, Thomas Iguh and Speedy Eric, whose real name is A.
Onwudiwe. There is no doubt that Ogali published a lot. Indeed, more
than 23 pamphlets are credited to him alone. Yet, he has top contenders
with these pamphleteers. For example, Okenwa Olisah’s works are as
prodigious and influential in Onitsha market as those of Ogali. The
literary oeuvre of Olisah is also as remarkable as that of Ogali, if not
more remarkable in the trouble-shooting and hair-raising adventures of
the characters he reveals in each of these pamphlets. The literary style
he employs in each of the texts is no less remarkable. Okenwa worked
with the full range of the sub-genres of the Onitsha market pamphlet
tradition, and like Ogali A. Ogali, he was deeply embedded in the
“highlife” philosophy of the time. He published in the sub-genres of the
do-it-yourself, the romance, and the political as well as the “street
philosophy” sub-genres. Like Ogali, Olisah knew and worked the fears
and aspirations of his low-class readership, making members laugh when
there was a need to, cry when they ought to, and sober when it was
necessary to be sober. Like Ogali, Olisah brought the world to members
of his readership by instigating them to be part of a political world that
was far-away from the location of Onitsha at the bend of the great River
Niger. Through his political pamphlets, Olisah taught members of this
readership not just to read about political figures but also to listen
attentively to the values of politics as well as the unpredictability of that
flamboyant but equally deadly game. In this regard, perhaps Olisah is
best known for the pamphlets, How Lumumbar Suffered in Life and Died in
Katanga and the pseudo-philosophical Drunkard Think Bar is Heaven.
Thomas Iguh is also one of the top ranking authors of the Onitsha market.
With over twenty pamphlets to his credit, he ranks well in the company
of Ogali and Olisah. His best sellers are Agnes in the Game of Love, Alice
in the Romance of Love and The Disappointed Lover. Like Ogali and Olisah,
Iguh was also very interested in publishing political pamphlets. He spent
a lot of time writing about Patrice Lumumba, the Congolese leader that
was murdered in the 1960s. There is also Speedy Eric, whose real name
is, according to Emmanuel Obiechina, A. Onwidiwe. He is perhaps the
only one who adopted a pen-name in a consistent manner in the industry.
His major contribution came with the publication of Mabel the Sweet
Honey that Poured Away. This pamphlet sold for a whopping sum of 5
shillings, which was a lot of money at the time. If the pricing of this
pamphlet is anything to go, Mabel must have been indeed very popular
with the readers of the Onitsha market pamphlets in the 1950s and 1960s.
Mabel is the first and perhaps the only erotic pamphlet in the industry. It
is graphic in the sexual descriptions of the activities of young Mabel in
222

the symbolic location of her mother’s eatery called “Pleasure Home.”
The point of the story is to show a local girl who goes beyond the
boundaries set for women within the new “highlife modernity.” The story
reaffirms time and time again that this young girl obviously misreads
the form and content of the Onitsha market modernity. For this grievous
offence, she ends dead in a public latrine in Port Harcourt as she tries to
“commit abortion.”
Yet, even in this galaxy of the accomplished writers of the
Onitsha market tradition, it is Ogali A. Ogali’s literary record that stands
out the most. It is still one of the best examples of how a text can record
the production of locality in the vast and unknowable way of the eccentric
global. Veronica My Daughter was the “darling” of the Onitsha readers.
It spoke to them directly the way no other pamphlet did. It captured the
heart of the readers. It captivated the thoughts of the reader, and more
than anything else, it eloquently restates the nexus of the fast changing
Onitsha world of the 1950s well into the 1960s. In it, the meaning of the
“highlife” modernity finds its most remarkable expression.
Ogali A Ogali’s death on July 9, 2006 is symbolic of the end of a
literary era in which he was the Dean, and the real “strong man of the
pen.”
Notes
1 This is a common Warri pidgin word for “a fool” or someone that is
easily “fooled.”
2 Mabel is the name of the sexually provocative heroine of Speedy
Eric’s pamphlets, Mabel the Sweet Honey that Poured Away.
3 See Uduma Kalu’s report in the Nigerian Guardian, “Bayelsa
Celebrates the Great Poet, Gabriel Okara,” September 25, 2006.
4 See Ulli Beier’s short but very interesting essay on the art of the
Onitsha sign-writers who compare to the pamphleteers as recorders of
the tension and aspiration of that came to this location in “Naïve
Nigerian Art.”
5 Reacting to the pogrom against the Igbo ethnic group in the northern
parts of Nigeria, which was the fallout of the political power tussle at
the time, the Igbo nation declared its bid to secede from the Nigerian
Federation. A long a bitter war ensued. It lasted from 1967-1970 with
the capitulation of the newly declared Biafran Republic.
Works Cited.
Anafulu, C. Joseph. “Onitsha Market Literature: Dead or Alive?” Research
in African Literatures, 4, 1973.
223

Beier, Ulli. “Public Opinions on Lovers: Popular Nigerian Literature Sold
in Onitsha Market.” Black Orpheus: A Journal of African African-
American Literature. No 14, 1964: 4-16.
__ “Naive Nigeria Arts.” Black Orpheus 19, 1966:31-43.
Iguh, Thomas. Agnes in the Game of Love. Onitsha: A. Onwundiwe &Sons
[no date of publication]
Nwoga, Donatus Ibe. “Onitsha Market Literature.” Transition No 19, 1965:
26-33.
Obiechina, Emmanuel, (Dr.) Literature for the Masses: An Analytical Study
of Popular Pamphleteering in Nigeria. Enugu: Nwankwo-Ifejika and
Co. Publishers, 1971.
___An African Popular Literature: A Study of Onitsha Market Pamphlets.
Cambridge: The University of Cambridge Press, 1973.
Obiora, Ralph. Beauty is Love. Onitsha [no date of publication]
Olisah, Sunday Okenwa. Drunkard Believe Bar is Heaven. Onitsha:
Chinyelu Press [No date of publication]
___How Lumumba Suffered in Life ad Died In Katanga. Onitsha: Okenwa
Publication [No date of publication]
___Elizabeth My Lover: A Drama. Main Market, Onisha, Nigeria: A.
Onwudiwe & Sons [No date of publication; sold for 2/6pNet]
___The Disappointed Lover. Onitsha. Appolos Brothers [No date of
publications]
Ogali, A. Ogali (Snr.). Veronica My Daughter (A Drama). Onitsha: Appolos
Bros Press (Not Dated).
___ Long Long Ago. Ovum: Nigeria [Probably published in 1957]
___Mr. Rabbit is Dead. Ovim: Nigeria [Probably published 1958]
___ Adelabu. Onitsha [Probably published in 1958]
___The Ghost of Lumumba. Enugu: Nigeria. [Probably published in 1961]
___Thirty Years for the Director. Enugu, Nigeria, 1973.
___No Heaven for the Priest. Enugu, Nigeria, 1970.
___ Agnes the Faithful Lover. [Unknown publisher; no date of publication]
___ Angelina My Darling. [Unknown publisher; no date of publication]
___ Adventure of Mirinda. [Unknown publisher; no date of publication]
.
224

____ The Voice of Love. [Unknown publisher; no date of publication]
____ The Love that Fights. [Unknown publisher; no date of publication]
____ Adanwa Nwan. [Unknown publisher; no date of publication]
____Do you know Them? [Unknown publishers; no date
of publication]
____ The Road to Success. [Unknown publisher; no date of publication]
____he Adventure of Constable Joe. [Unknown publisher, no date of
publication]
_____Is this Politics? [Unknown publishers, no date of
_____The Juju Priest. Enugu. Fourth Dimension Co Ltd, 2002
Sander, Richard W and Peter K. Ayers (ed.) Ogali A Ogali, Veronica My
Daughter and Other Onitsha Market Plays and Stories. Washington DC:
Three Continent Press, 1980.
Speedy Eric. Mabel the Sweet Honey that Poured Away. Main Market,
Onitsha, Nigeria: A. Onwundiwe &Sons.[No date of publication]
Thometz, Kurt. Life Turns Man Up and Down: Highlife, Useful Advice and
publication]
Mad English-An African Market Literature. New York: Pantheon Books,
2001
Ude, A.O. Nigerian Bachelor Guide. Onitsha [No date of publication]
Onookome Okome
University of Alberta
225

Cyprian O.D. Ekwensi (Sept. 26, 1921 – Nov. 4, 2007)
The Writer, the Man and His Era
When Cyprian O. D. Ekwensi quietly passed into eternity on
Sunday, November 4, 2007, Nigeria, Africa and indeed the literary
world lost a most endowed and gifted artist. Cyprian Ekwensi was
one of a kind – versatile, dexterous, humorous, kind-hearted but firm
and principled, affable and charitable, but strict in his ways and
rarely ostentatious. He had no need to be. His death at 86 must have
surprised him at the critical point of the rite of passage. Longevity is a
known virtue in his lineage. He hoped he would equal or surpass his
late mother’s age of 101, or at the very least break even with has late
father’s 98 years. Even if he didn’t realize it on this side of the planet,
he now knows that he certainly outlived his parents, for a writer like
Cyprian Ekwensi does not die. He lives eternally in his works, and
they are literally speaking countless.
Ekwensi was a writer for all seasons and all ages. He wrote for
children, adolescents, adults and the aged. He wrote for men and
women. His primary goal was to amuse, to entertain, and to raise
moral questions that besiege humanity at critical periods of
development. As a writer he saw himself very much as an avid
photographer behind a camera, which was his greatest hobby. When
he stood behind the camera he reproduced the image as it showed
through the lens. His guiding principle as a writer was to hold a
mirror up to the people of his society and describe faithfully the
reflections that he saw. It often puzzled him why and how people
could quarrel with his depictions of reality in a novel like Jagua Nana
(1961), his most popular and controversial creative work. The central
character is a magnificently fashionable but raw prostitute in her
forties in love with a young teacher in his late twenties who hoped she
would sponsor him to travel to England to study law. She on her part
hoped he would marry and support her in her old age. So what?
Ekwensi knew her type existed in the emerging Nigerian urban
centers. And when an undergraduate at the University of Ibadan
(then University College, Ibadan) tore his copy of the novel to shreds
and publicly denounced it as pornographic and a corrupter of youth,
Ekwensi countered with:
I have never bothered to reply to any of the
nonsense that has been written by the illiterate
and uninformed like yourself. But I am writing
226

to you for the simple reason that there is SOME
hope. You are young, you are in a very highly
respected University (hence the tragedy of it
all). You stand a chance of having your
erroneous views at least re-orientated. Not
necessarily by me. I am too emotionally close
to all this rubbish. Let’s begin at the beginning.
The function of a novelist, at least ONE of
them: To hold a mirror up to nature. This
particular mirror shows you naked, ashamed,
exposed and bleeding. The reflection is
terrifying and ghastly. Therefore, what do you
do? You cry out. Throw a cloth over the mirror.
It cannot be true! Are you now – in the
hypocritical manner to which I have since
resigned my ears – going to tell me that there
are NO PROSTITUTES IN NIGERIA, in Ekotedo
Ibadan; or that school teachers can never fall in
love with prostitutes? (Morning Post, Lagos
January 23, 1964)
But the Nigerian Parliament at the time, apparently sided with the
undergraduate student and others like him who only saw
pornography and no art in Jagua Nana. For, shortly after its
publication, an Italian film company, Ultra Films of Italy, representing
five international film industries, acquired the rights to film it. The
year was 1961 shortly after the Nigerian independence. The
Parliament arbitrarily stopped the filming giving the novel the historic
identity of being the first Nigerian novel so far to be debated on the
floor of Parliament. The morally conscious parliamentarians
maintained that Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation which had
just obtained her independence ‘on a platter of gold,’ should not be so
soon seen through the eyes of a rumbunctious prostitute! But Ekwensi
was not the kind of wrestler who could be discounted because his knee
had touched the ground. Over the next decade after the debacle of
Jagua Nana, Ekwensi’s creative prolificity and effusive versatility
simply exploded. He published 11 (eleven) books—- Burning Grass
(1962), Beautiful Feathers (1963), Iska (1966), Yaba Roundabout Murder
(1962), Trouble in Form Six (1966), Juju Rock (1966), An African Night’s
Entertainment (1962), The Great Elephant Bird (1965), The Rainmaker and
Other Stories (1965), Lokotown and Other Stories (1966), The Boa Suitor
(1966).
227

As a writer Cyprian O. D. Ekwensi has left his footprints
indelibly on the sands of time. He was a pioneer in many fronts. His
People of the City (1954) is credited with being the first modern West
African novel in English. His Burning Grass (1962), was the first fulllength
novel to deal with the life realities of the nomadic Cow Fulani of
Northern Nigeria. His Drummer Boy (1960) was the beginning of the
reading of fiction for most Nigerian children in their early school
years. His When Love Whispers (1948) written in the last weekend of
February 1948 and published soon after (to boost the yearnings of a
rising entrepreneur book seller in Yaba, Lagos) marked
unquestionably the beginning of the pamphlet literature in Nigeria.
The pamphlet literature would later flourish into the popular Onitsha
Market Literature. Ekwensi who was at the time, a young school
teacher, fell in love with his sweetheart and wanted to marry her. Her
father scorned him and dashed his hopes. His daughter’s hand in
marriage was only to be asked by men in respectable professions –
lawyers, doctors, engineers and the like, not a mere teacher! Ekwensi
deeply hurt by this humiliation, wrote When Love Whispers. It was his
own story and he dedicated the novel to the girl in question. His
moral position in the pamphlet was that by their objections to a
marriage decided by their daughters, parents force the daughters into
marriages of convenience, without spark and without feeling.
And with that personal love story, Cyprian O. D. Ekwensi had
unconsciously founded an inimitable literary tradition in Nigeria, the
Pamphlet (Onitsha Market) Literature. He styled himself the
Grandfather of the Nigerian novel but he was indeed more than that.
He remains one of the best short story writers that the African
continent has ever produced, and certainly one of the most enigmatic
African writers of the 20 th century. In his final testimony of himself,
Ekwensi’s as yet unpublished autobiography, In My Time, documents
for posterity the candid endeavors and contributions of a writer, fluent
in the three Nigerian major languages, who traversed widely the
Nigerian landscape, observed it meticulously, recorded the truth as he
saw and perceived it, and wrote for the entertainment of the masses
seen by him as those reading and enjoying what many academic
literary critics could not understand, and in their blindness, threw
stones at the author!
But who was, Cyprian Ekwensi, the man? An Igbo, born in
Minna, Niger State, in Northern Nigeria, Cyprian Ekwensi did not
come home to his village Nkwelle, near Ogidi in Anambra State, till he
was a full-grown man. His father, David Anadumaka Ekwensi (the
228

name Ekwensi is really a shortened form of ‘Aniekwensimem’ – may
the god Ani (Earth) protect me from all evil ) moved his family from
their ancestral homeland to Minna in 1919 two years before Cyprian
was born. For nearly half a century, the older Ekwensi made his home
in Minna, earning his living as a dexterous carpenter, an industrious
farmer and an indefatigable elephant hunter. He moved his family
back to Nkwelle in 1966 at the outbreak of the hostilities leading to the
Nigerian Civil war. An Igbo, born in far away Northern Nigeria,
growing up among Hausa playmates in school and at home, the only
way Cyprian could retain his Igbo heritage was by a careful process of
induction and acculturation in the home. His father saw to that for
young Cyprian imbibed aspects of Igbo philosophy and attitude to life
through the numerous Igbo tales, myths and legends which his father
passed on to him. He was later to document these tales in his first
published collection of Igbo folktales entitled Ikolo the Wrestler and
other Ibo Tales (1947). In the home too, Cyprian was taught the Igbo
language so that he was privileged to grow up speaking both Igbo and
Hausa as first languages. He was later to add Yoruba as an
adolescent.
As a grown man Cyprian had many peculiarities which
affected his style and manner of life. He believed that the secret of
living to a good ripe old age lies in not being addicted to the cushioned
life of artificial luxuries but rather in giving the body a fairly hard
grind and in being as close to nature as possible. He rarely turned on
the air-conditioner in his car. The fans in his room were only
sparingly used, perhaps to indulge guests. Cyprian himself would not
exchange anything natural for the artificial or the superficial. Instead
of the air-conditioner, the fresh air that blows through the windows of
a house or car was preferred. Locally grown foods were preferred to
imported packages. He told with relish how his mother served (and
they loved it) visiting white American friends whom he took to
Nkwelle, the traditional unpeeled boiled yam with fresh raw oil, salt
and pepper for breakfast. Cornflakes, sausages and the like were, of
course, not beyond the Ekwensi household by any stretch of
imagination. An avid coffee drinker, Ekwensi’s choice was the rough
and tough local brew, the Abeokuta coffee. A pharmacist by training
and profession, Ekwensi’s favourite prescription for the cure of iba
(jaundice/malaria) was the boiled concoction of lemon grass and other
herbs. This love of nature may have been something that young
Cyprian imbibed from his father who as an elephant hunter, must
have experienced the rustic side of life in thick forests and lonely bush
229

paths as Cyprian was to do years later, in a more scientific manner as
a forestry student.
In his real life there was an effort to be both a city man and a
rural dweller. But no one who knew him closely was in doubt as to
where his heart really was. Although he had retired from public
service and had no compelling reason to stay in Lagos, and although
he had a beautiful home in an alluring low density area of the
Independence Layout, Enugu; Ekwensi lived in the most hectic part of
Surulere, Lagos, and commuted the long distances on Nigeria’s
unpredictable highways to (for him), suburban Enugu whenever he
chose. Yet, Enugu, the capital of Enugu State is a lively city in its own
rights. But it did not have for Ekwensi the dense anonymity of Lagos
nor did it have the madness, the chaos, the hustle and bustle of Lagos
which enchanted Ekwensi and informed his creativity. He once
described Enugu as “a place where everyone knows what goes on in
everyone else’s backyard.”
By the time he turned 65 in 1986, Cyprian Ekwensi had written
on the average of one book for every two years he had lived, and about
two short stories for every year of his life. He had written several
plays for the radio and filmscripts for the screen. The key word about
his real life as well as his literary career was versatility. His writings
deal with love, infatuation, infidelity, war, adventure, fantasy, politics,
childhood, marriage, death and ritual sacrifice, to mention but a few of
his multifarious themes. He collected folktales. He wrote about life in
Yorubaland, Hausaland, and Igboland. He wrote about the Ijaw, the
Efik, and the Urhobo. He traversed the different varieties of the
Nigerian vegetation in his fiction and waded through the vicissitudes
of life in Nigeria’s new urban environments.
As early as 1956, a writer in West African Review had
commented on Ekwensi’s multiple interests and intellectual
endeavors:
There are two Cyprian Ekwensis,
Cyprian Ekwensi, the Nigerian novelist,
broadcaster, short story writer, the man who
lives in the world of ink and literature – and
Cyprian Ekwensi, the pharmacist, the man of
the whitecoat, dispensing medicine, sterilising
injections and controlling drugs.
In 1956 there may have been two Ekwensis. By 2007 there had been
several Ekwensis. By turns a teacher, a journalist, a pharmacist, a
230

diplomat, a businessman, a Company Director, a Public Relations
Consultant, a photographer, a graphic artist, an ingenious think-tank,
an information consultant, a writer and a moulder of public opinion.
In his fiction he had reflected this mixed grill often producing a kind of
hodge-podge which amused many, excited some and irritated a few.
Cyprian Ekwensi played without regrets, leading roles in
Biafra during the civil war; first, as Chairman of the Bureau for
External Publicity for Biafra (1967-69) and later as Controller-General,
Broadcasting Corporation of Biafra, in the few months before the end
of the war in January 1970. Until his death he firmly believed that the
cause for which millions of Igbo people lost their lives during the civil
war, had not been seriously addressed by successive post-war
Nigerian governments. He believed that the continued chaotic
political situations in present day Nigeria were largely attributable to
Nigerian rulers continuing to treat the Igbo ethnic group as foreigners
in their own fatherland.
Throughout his writing career, Cyprian Ekwensi earned for
himself the reputation of being a sensational writer, a reveller in
topicality, and a novelist perpetually concerned with urban
distractions and their consequences on youth especially females. But
however readers and literary critics perceived him as a writer, he was
of all Nigerian writers of his era, one novelist whose work was likely to
be picked up while one did the weekly groceries or waited at a police
check-point, or during a traffic ‘go-slow.’ Ekwensi seemed to ask for
nothing more! He loved to entertain Nigerians of all ages through his
writings, and he will surely be missed by Nigerians of all ages to the
end of time!
Adieu, Cyprian!!!
You have fought the good fight.
You have won the race.
You will live forever in literary minds the world over.
May God grant you Eternal Peace!!
Ernest N. Emenyonu
University of Michigan-Flint
231